


Catatonic

by IreneClaire



Series: Various Notions Collection [29]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Bromance, Fantasy, Gen, Ghosts, Hurt Danny "Danno" Williams, Protective Steve McGarrett, Protectiveness, Spirits, myths, word of the day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-21 12:32:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14915441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IreneClaire/pseuds/IreneClaire
Summary: It's here.He heard the whisper on the wind at the same moment he saw it. A black silhouette from just within the lip of the bunker itself. Reacting quickly, Steve clenched his fists before whirling around with his gun aimed towards the entrance.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Calacious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/gifts).



> I do not own Hawaii Five-0 or any characters. No copyright infringement intended.
> 
> Notes: This story is for Calacious who fully encouraged me to have some fun with a story that might serve no other purpose than to be spooky! This mixes a variety of different myths and legends together without a real, true attempt at research. I've spun things to keep the story SHORT - 2 chapters - and moving merrily along.
> 
> I must be honest - this is a contrived "Word of the Day" as I made the word fit the story I had in mind. Not beta'd .. any mistakes are mine own of course.

 

**H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O**

 

_**Word of the Day: Catatonic.** of or in an immobile or unresponsive stupor._

 

"Danny? What happened?" Steve asked breathlessly as he knelt by his partner's side and hastily stripped off his black gloves. "Hey. Look at me ... _look at me_ ... tell me what happened."

Danny didn't reply though and Steve cursed under his breath as he tried to tug Danny's chin towards his face. It was fruitless. Danny's neck was rigid and Steve failed at the attempt which was even more alarming. Sitting ramrod straight and as if rigor had set in, the blue of Danny's eyes were glazed over and he was fixated on some far away spot beyond Steve's right shoulder. Losses growing by the second as sweat began to bead across Danny's forehead and a subtle tremor rippled through the taut muscles, Steve raised his voice, unable to hide his unease.

" _Me_... look at _me_. Come on, hey. Danny? What the hell happened?" Steve was just about pleading and refusing to listen to the faint illogical murmurings which began to tease his mind in an ancient, raspy lilting tone.

_Them. They sent it ..._

"Danny?" Steve ignored the mental warning with a growl. The gibberish had devolved into _shadows so dark, they were pitch black in daylight. Banshees ... the lot of them._

It hadn't made sense the prior day and certainly didn't make sense now. The old man who'd once been catatonic upon arrival to the hospital had woken sounding like a B-movie gone worse. There had been no diagnosis defining the man's catatonic-state and then no reason for why he'd roused. He'd only gotten attention because he'd been a child-hood friend of the Governor's visiting Oahu from Dublin.

So now? Danny had obviously walked into some kind of ambush; someone had surprised his partner and Danny was hiding some kind of injury. No more, no less. That was the one and only rational explanation.

"Come on, look at me, buddy ... who did this? Huh?" Steve persisted. "Where are you hurt?"

The thin elderly voice smiled in his head and Steve made a face. _Bánánach_. He'd had to look it up to understand after gently interrogated the Governor's friend. He'd done it on the sly, learning that bánánach were spectres which haunted old battlefields. Steve hadn't been too impressed, though he understood then because there was a very similar Hawaiian legend of the same ilk. He'd filed it away and respectfully said nothing, agreeing with the Governor that Five-0 would investigate his friend's apparent abduction ... he'd been robbed and badly addled in the process.

The same had just happened to Danny and so ...

 _Them_ a new voice whispered and Steve blinked, stiffening in surprise because that time, he'd heard the word as if on the wind. But so near to him and far too close.

"Hey! Hey ... who's there!?" He shouted as he stayed low, crouched, covering his partner. "Son of a bitch," Steve muttered to himself, feeling foolish and jumpy as hell when he saw and heard nothing more. He was falling for rumors and lies and he'd never been one to be impressionable. Still, he and Danny were far too exposed and he needed to get them out of there. Now.

"Danny ... look at me. We gotta go." Steve tried giving Danny a firm shake. "Come on! Just blink dammit! Don't just sit there!" Even ducking his head this way and that, he couldn't capture Danny's attention though. "What the hell are you looking at?!" He cursed in frustration as the doctors' initial recitation on the old man came to mind.

_Catatonic upon arrival. No outward signs of attack ... still ..._

"Danny ...," Steve urged him as he pushed the doctors' words to the wayside even though Danny looked every bit the definition of catatonic.

When Danny's brief transmission had cut-off mid-sentence, he'd double-timed it to his partner's side from the opposite end of the bunker. He'd found Danny as he was now: sitting up against a concrete wall with his legs straight out in front of him, his back rigid. The wall was cold and damp, crumbling from age as it sucked water into its old surface only to spew it out in a thin sheen at its base. Danny was literally sitting in that dank, shallow puddle which had coagulated there. He apparently didn't care. In fact, from what Steve could see, Danny might not even know where he was right then.

Growing more than just a little nervous, Steve looked around the old bunker for the hundredth time. He had an eerie feeling of being watched and he couldn't shake it. Again ridiculous because the place wasn't even all that remote. And with the sun shining brilliantly through a smattering of pretty green leaves, Steve could still hear the distant sounds of cars and trucks on the highway. The normal predictable sounds of life and civilization. This was a popular spot for the local kids to throw down the occasional party, proven by the volume of liquor bottles, cheap beer cans and blackened circular hunk of metal serving as a make-shift fire pit.

Eyes narrowed suspiciously, Steve looked deeply into the maw of the bunker's doorway. There was a faint, dim flicker of light at the other side. Likely a point of egress or at minimum, a fissure in crumbling concrete. The thing had been falling to the elements for some time now. Regardless, Steve knew that Danny hadn't actually gone into the thing; that was the reason for his partner's exasperated transmission in the first place. At least partly the reason. Steve had missed the rest.

"Danny?" Steve tried one last time while tapping his comm link and switching gears completely. No matter what he might try, he knew that he wasn't going to get anything out of his partner. Something had happened ... _maybe_ ... Steve both knew and didn't know at the same time. The rumors had been running rampant since before he was a kid and that damned old man? Spitting gibberish so badly about god knew what. All of it was the stuff of nightmares and dark magic.

 _Make-believe._ Even senility ... nonetheless, Steve shook his head as the hair on the back of his neck began to itch.

_They sent it ... ancient taboo ..._ _labu... the black ghost ..._

_Impossible_. Even if some tiny part of him had doubts from years of growing up surrounded by native culture, his adult brain said it was sheer bunk. He needed to take care of his partner and whatever the doctors found out, therein would like the most honest and very credible truth.

"Lou? Lou! Where're you at? I've got a problem ... a big one."

Grim-faced, Steve started to pat Danny down looking for hidden injuries. He quickly ran his fingers through Danny's hair, down his neck and then flipped the velcro off Danny's vest so that Danny might breathe easier. Still feeling nervous, Steve left the vest in place though as he continued his fast but efficient triage.

"Nothing ... nothing," Steve muttered to himself as he ended his search down each of Danny's legs. Good and yet ... maybe not so much as Steve's imagination began to run wild. Drugs? Toxic inhalants? Some kind of ... _what_? Poison? He scowled to himself, scrubbing his hand roughly through his hair as the old man's incessant babble helplessly ran through his mind.

_Them._

_It._

The sick old man in the hospital had just about been screaming nonsense ... and how _they'd_ infected his mind ... tried to take his soul ... _but he was too old_. No. Steve shook his head as his heart lurched inside his chest, feeling desperate enough to check Danny out even more closely. This was impossible. The old man had made no sense at all. Irish folklore and Hawaiian legend muddled and merged. His team were only here at the bunker checking out one tiny aspect of the incredible story even though Steve, like Danny, had thought the entire escapade a massive waste of time.

"Lou? Report," Steve demanded more forcibly. "Lou?" He frowned listening hard, a hand tightening on his weapon as he made sure he was directly shielding Danny from whatever - no, that was wrong. He could feel whoever it was nearby. _He could feel ... them, or ..._

_It's here._

He heard the whisper on the wind at the same moment he saw it. A black silhouette from just within the lip of the bunker itself. Reacting quickly, Steve clenched his fists before whirling around with his gun aimed towards the entrance.

_Give him._

A louder whisper. A demand for Danny and Steve crouched over his partner as he tried to track what wasn't supposed to be there.

_Labu - a black ghost._

Steve startled though because another image came to mind. Another name. _Kino wailua. Spirit of the dead._ His eyes flickered in vain, his gun-hand seeking purchase and needing to hold his fire when none was found. At once thinking a shape might be there but then losing its shadows against the greenery of leaves, Steve hesitated; if such a thing had been there at all.

"Lou? Answer me ... report," Steve ground out on high alert. His heart was thudding now as he crouched partially near Danny's side, lightly balanced on the balls of his feet. "Lou? Where the hell are you?"

"St've ... w'h're ..." Lou's voice might have been clear on the other side of the island so Steve wasn't sure if he felt much better even when the deep tone finally crackled over the comm link. It was so badly distorted that each word was unrecognizable and that, too? That made zero sense at all.

"Forget it!" Steve practically shouted as he hit the link in his ear so hard, he rocked his own head on his neck. "Lou, if you can hear me ... meet me at the rally point! I need help ... Danny needs help."

Covered in a sheen of sweat, Danny was flat out shaking now, his hands fisted almost painfully tight in his lap. That's when Steve realized that Danny's weapon was missing. Eyes wide as another movement caught his eye only to disappear as quickly as he turned, Steve made a decision. His next search was half-hearted and nearest where Danny was sitting, knowing the weapon wouldn't be there. The bunker beckoned him again and that distant light at its other end seemed like a beacon. But then it shifted and then winked out entirely and Steve cursed softly.

_Give him. Give. Him._

"Fuck off," Steve challenged back, sneering bravely against an odd frigid breeze which wafted warningly across his face. It held a thick stench of rot and mildew, then something else that made Steve gag and he lurched into action.

"We're leaving," Steve said out loud, anger and fear for Danny warring together as the tremors visibly increased through his partner's torso. "Easy buddy ... there's only one place you're going and that's with me." Opting to draw on his anger, he set his jaw in determination as he blatantly ignored an incomprehensible blast of putrid air that nearly froze his lungs. He gagged again and then spat up bile, refusing to back down even when he failed at sucking in a breath of clean, fresh air.

_Give. Himmmmmm._

Eyes tearing from the toxic odor, Steve forced himself to breathe. He didn't have time to worry about anything else as he grabbed Danny's arms and hefted him over a shoulder. With an audible grunt, Steve staggered to his feet, eyes slitted in anger, his gun at the ready despite the awkward weight of Danny's body.

GIVE _HIM_!

Unable to speak as he gagged and retched against the stench, Steve tightened the hold he had on Danny's back, wending his fingers firmly through the webbing of his partner's tac-vest. With a snarl on his lips, Steve barely paused as a black shadow flit warningly across the sun-drenched path he intended to take. Maybe he should have stopped. Instead, he forced his feet to move.

_**~ to be continued ~** _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not own Hawaii Five-0 or any characters. No copyright infringement intended.

 

**H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O**

 

Steve's face was shimmering in front of him and Danny blinked a good many times, trying to see him better but it was as if a veil was hanging between them. Danny frowned when his vision refused to fully cooperate. He stared at Steve trying to understand the look on his friend's face but Steve's features swam sickeningly on and Danny fought to find the right word around a spasm of nausea. He finally settled on calling what he could see of it, Steve's patented aneurysm face. Danny thought he hadn't been able to identify it mostly - and despite his problematic vision - because he hadn't seen that look in a very, very long time.

More was wrong though. This wasn't right because Steve shouldn't be here though. Danny had watched him ... die ... be _killed_ because ... _why_?

 _Choose_.

Danny zoned out as he tumbled back into something he couldn't yet decipher as dream or reality. He tried to breathe as the threat bore down on him again. _It_ was close. He could smell it and his nose wrinkled at the thick stench. _It was right there_. Right on top of him or standing behind him, their bodies barely touching. A reactive tremor ran through him from top to bottom for the ultimatum he heard next because with that came dim image of his children. Of Grace ... Charlie ... and he just didn't know why.

 _Choose_.

Danny heaved in a juddering breath of air as the voice whispered inside his head. He'd chosen ... _not to choose_. There had been so much blood because Danny had failed him. _Steve_. The wraith had whispered threats as he'd forced Danny to do ... _what_? Sitting now in a hospital bed, Danny's frown deepened as his stare lengthened beyond Steve's silhouette.

_There had been so much blood, it had been as dense and black as tar._

Had he done something ... or not? But not ... not _what_?

He couldn't remember anything more than a feeling of being helplessly trapped ... _and being forced to_ ... Danny slowly shook his head in abject denial when Steve's face shimmered in front of him. No. No. He couldn't have done _that_ and his gaze falling down to his hands as his thoughts trailed off into bleakness. It had happened because he'd refused to choose. And now? He didn't know what was real. Danny's warped vision was now swimming even more as he tried to focus and his hands blurred white where they lay in his lap. Despite that, Danny could see that his fingers were shaking badly and that similar vibrations were running up into his forearms.

"Danny?" The whisper was faint and Danny slowly looked back up into Steve's face wonderingly. That gauzy veil was still there but he could see that Steve's lips were moving. He might have been talking for awhile for all Danny knew; his hearing seemed as unreliable as his eyesight for some reason.

_Steve's face._

How could it be? How could Steve be _here_. He'd watched Steve die. Maybe? _Hadn't he?_

 _Choose._ But Danny hadn't chosen. He'd refused thinking he'd be the sacrifice ... and ... there'd been other _consequences_ ...

 _There had been so much blood, it had been as thick and black as tar. Spilling down Steve's throat from his jugular._ It had been on Danny's fingers ... it had coated the knife. His knife. _It's_ knife. The knife he'd been pressed to use ... to choose ... _or ... he remembered refusing._ He remembered ... _it laughing._ A sluggish, thick guttural sound as black as Steve's blood as spilled to the ground.

_You'll learn. You've promise. Let me show you ..._

Shaking his head, Danny audibly choked at a lethal memory he didn't know if contrived or real.

"Danny?" Steve called his name again and Danny looked up, squinting through an onslaught of tears and trying to really _see_. This time wracked by doubts and fear, he raised his hand. With trembling fingers he reached out through the veil.

 

 

**H5O* H5O**

Steve sat on the side of Danny's hospital bed watching him struggle with a hopeful heart. Danny'd been fighting that catatonic state so hard and for so long, his breathing was labored and a nurse had come in to affix an oxygen cannula to his nose. In one hand, Steve wanted him to stop and rest. But on the other? He needed Danny back from wherever the hell he'd gone for just shy of two whole days. Thumbing the sweat away from his own upper lip and trying not to dwell on the fact that the Governor's child-hood friend had died whilst still babbling about boogeymen and lost souls, Steve couldn't escape the whispers which were still inside his head. He wanted to deny that something hadn't happened and yet, he simply couldn't. Even as he watched Danny, a part of his mind insisted on wandering away and he cringed at a remembered foul odor and what he'd felt as he'd escaped the place with Danny literally slung over his shoulder.

He startled when Danny's head moved and his eyes closed for few moments. That was a good sign and Steve grinned in relief when Danny's eyes re-opened because they seemed just a little less unfocused.

"Come on buddy, you can do it," he spoke to Danny in a normal voice, calm and authoritative. Grinning like a loon when Danny truly managed to look at him after expending what seemed to be a mammoth amount of effort. Nearly two days had gone by and that hadn't happened before. Steve waited with baited breath, thrilled when Danny didn't fall back into that faraway place but instead, scowled.

 _He scowled_ ... and Steve felt like laughing then as glazed blue eyes flickered across his face.

"There you go. That's better," Steve said, still grinning, alight with anticipation as Danny studied his face. It was easy to see that Danny was confused but in his usual display of obstinacy, digging in harder and refusing to let things go this time. "Good, you just keep on fighting, partner," Steve encouraged when Danny's scowl deepened exponentially as his eyes landed on Steve's mouth and this time, Steve blinked in surprise. Had Danny actually heard or understood him?

"Danny?" He asked, encouraged even when Danny slowly shook his head from side to side. The struggle was real and Steve got it, but he felt a pang of fear when Danny briefly closed his eyes only to open them to stare blankly at his hands ... hands that were beginning to shake very badly.

"No! Hey ... don't ... Danny!" Steve breathed out as Danny's expression altered back to one of that mind-numbing void.

_Give him. Give. Him!_

Steve shuddered at the low, evil tone he couldn't seem to purge out of his mind. He wondered if Danny was hearing the same thing - but differently. If demands were being made or threats lobbed in whatever place he was stuck inside. Some threat vicious enough which had sent his partner over the edge.

"God what am I thinking?" Steve complained under his breath. No one was there. Danny wasn't hearing anything in the hospital. And the only thing crazy was Steve's insane mental ramblings. Yet, if Steve was still being affected by some remembered _thing_ which he couldn't hope to explain to Lou or to Danny's doctors, then Danny's catatonic state proved that whatever had been threatened or shown to him - no matter how inconceivable - had been one thousand times more traumatic.

The Governor's friend had died. But he was an old man ... anyway, where Danny was not. He was young. But if he were to believe the old man's ramblings, that was precisely why _it_ wanted Danny. Well, that just wasn't going to happen and Steve set his jaw firmly as Danny continued to stare at his hands, his expression saying that he was on the verge of zoning out again. He couldn't allow that to happen.

"Danny ... Danny?" Steve said, his tone far more demanding. He froze when Danny looked up, his eyes still not quite tracking well, but Danny was definitely fighting. Steve had gotten him closer to surfacing even if Danny seemed to be teetering on an iffy edge as his eyes inexplicably filled with tears.

"Danny? What the hell is going on?" Steve murmured softly, not daring to move as Danny reached out to shakily touch his face, his chin, his neck. He was at a loss when Danny gave out with a soft, garbled sound and a tear broke loose to trace down his cheek. Danny's fingers were like ice against his skin as he awkwardly sketched a line with his index finger across Steve's jawline, falling down to his throat. When his fingers rested there, Danny stared even harder at Steve's neck before murmuring so softly that Steve barely heard him. Then, Steve wasn't sure he'd even heard the right thing.

"I didn't choose."

Steve automatically grasped Danny's fingers, holding his cold hand between his two warmer ones. He opened his mouth to ask and then switched gears because, what did it matter? Steve didn't understand what the words meant and as Danny's face changed yet again, Steve was already rightly guessing that Danny wouldn't know either. So it didn't matter; what mattered was making sure that Danny didn't give up.

"It's not real," Steve said. Saying that felt wrong though. Something had been there. Something that neither of them would ever be able to explain. For them, it was certainly real enough and part of Danny was still inside it.

"Killed you," Danny whispered sadly as his fingers curved around the palm of Steve's hand. Steve startled, his eyes widening in surprise.

"No! What?! You ... didn't ... it didn't," Steve objected quickly. He swallowed hard and shook his head in exasperation understanding now why Danny had needed to touch his face ... his _neck_. Until Steve had taken his hand away from his throat, Danny had been almost transfixed.

"It lied ... and it's not here. It wants to hurt us ... other people ... anyone it can. _Hell_ , I don't know why ... that _place?_ Where it is?" Steve stammered like a fool, not knowing what to say. He sounded damned stupid as he fumbled for words and reasons that wouldn't exist in this world. Maybe some day he'd check it out again or try to find out the history of the place in order to find out why it was a place of torment.

Now though? Steve didn't care at all. He only wanted to protect his own and he felt a ripple of anger as Danny's internal struggle continued.

"I don't know what happened, Danno," Steve admitted to the unspoken question rippling across Danny's face. "But you have to let it go ... it's not here." His voice cracked and he gripped Danny's fingers even harder, hard enough to make his friend wince in very real pain.

"It's not here ... I know that much."

"But _it_ h-happened, d-didn't it?" Danny whispered after a long pause. "It was ... real?" Steve made a face as Danny looked around the hospital room before looking hard at Steve's neck as if reassuring himself that Steve was unscathed. Alive. His eyes were more clear with every passing second now, but they were still glassy and plagued by confusion.

" _It_ happened ... but ... I don't understand?"

"Yeah, something happened," Steve agreed softly. "You listen to me." His voice was so low now, only Danny had hope of hearing each secretive word. "Neither do I - I don't get it. But listen to me, you feel this? This is real ...," he said, gesturing with his chin to their joined hands. To make his point, Steve practically crushed Danny's fingers between his own, eliciting a grimace and a hiss of pain.

"A-are you t-trying to break my h-hand?" Danny muttered. He was blinking like mad now, even if his eyes were still filled with tears, while even more streaked his cheeks. This time though, Steve was sure they were tears of relief and he managed a careful grin.

"If it wakes you the hell up ... I'll gladly break it in half," Steve replied as evenly as he could because Danny was returning that hold just as tightly. Hand in hand, they were hanging on to each other. Each commiserating silently on an experience they'd never be able to share to anyone else.

"Good," Danny half-laughed as he hid the sob in his tone by scrubbing his face hard with his free hand. He sniffed and cleared his throat hoarsely before repeating himself. " _Good_." He glanced down to the hand trapped between Steve's two. His knuckles were bleached white by the force of Steve's grip and he smiled wanly into Steve's eyes.

"You do that."

"Whatever it takes, Danno," Steve softly replied. "Whatever it takes."

_**~ End. ~** _


End file.
